


Such stuff

by Lilliburlero



Category: Colditz (1972)
Genre: Class Issues, Gen, Period Typical Attitudes, References to Shakespeare, Theatre, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:27:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28150128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: Lt. Col. Preston has an unexpected talent.*Note: brief reference to antisemitism.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 10
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Such stuff

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kate_Wisdom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate_Wisdom/gifts).



I’m inclined to go along with it,’ Pat said. ‘Doesn’t cost us anything, wins a bit of easy goodwill, and gets us another bod with an excuse to go in and out of the theatre.’

‘I still think it’s toadying,’ Tim Downing objected.

‘Doesn’t have to be, if we choose the right speech,’ Dick said. ‘St Crispin’s Day might be a bit _obvious_ , and it probably wouldn’t endear us to the French…’

‘If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?’ Simon Carter muttered bitterly from his favoured cold-weather position, curled at the end of his bunk.

Pat drew the same sharp, assessing breath as he did when confronted with a dubiously propped stretch of tunnel. Dick’s nostrils flared and his lips twitched. Downing looked blank.

‘ _Merchant of Venice_ ,’ Pat clarified, to which Downing, who had retained from the Eng. Lit. offerings of a leading public school and frantic cramming for Sandhurst the single Shakespearean detail of the chiming clock in Caesar’s Rome, where no chiming clocks should be, did not look altogether the wiser. ‘I wonder how that _would_ go down. You know these people, Dick.’

‘I won’t take exception, seeing as it’s you, but my father’s crowd were a _tiny_ bit more civilised than our charming hosts. And as a matter of fact—’

George Brent completed his inventory of the scraps of waste paper he had hoarded for artistic use and swung down from his bunk. ‘The talk’s getting rather thespian over here, chaps. What goes on?’

‘Turns out our Kommandant is a bit of a Bardolator. He asked Colonel Preston if we would mind including a Shakespeare recitation of some kind in the Christmas revue. He’d like to hear how native speakers do it,’ Pat explained.

‘Asked…if we would _mind_?’

‘Yes, apparently he was very punctilious about it being a request in a personal capacity. We can just ignore it if we like. Downing thinks we ought. But I can’t help feeling there’s an opportunity in it, if only we knew where to look.’

‘I did a bit in that line at school,’ Brent proffered. ‘I mean, mainly I was i.c. scenery painting. But I took Siward in our School Cert. _Macbeth_ , which isn’t quite as tiddly as it sounds, because he understudies Macbeth, you know. I think I can remember a few of the speeches.’

‘Go on then,’ Dick rocked back on his chair in amused anticipation. ‘Give us your dagger.’

‘Well, now—’

‘You know you want to, George,’ Dick purred, genuinely persuasive. Pat saw suddenly what an unpredictable leaven Dick must have been amid the stodgy conventionality of milieux where _Downing_ counted as a maverick, and he shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.

‘All right. Um—’

George dropped to his knees and slapped the floorboards with large, deliberate gestures, raising quite a cloud of dust. ‘Is this a dagger,’ he puffed, ‘that I see before me—’

‘Come, let me clutch thee—’ He stared around wildly, resembling nothing so much as a kitten furious that once again, the string’s end seemed to have eluded it.

‘Or—art—thou… but… adaggerofthemi—ind,’ he pronounced, snatching blindly at empty air.

‘Gordon Bennett,’ said Carter, quite audibly, and excavated some papers from his inside jacket pocket.

‘As this which now I draw,’ George leapt to his feet, sizing up the imaginary-real dagger and the imaginary-imaginary dagger with the grim dismay of a battling housewife asked to pay porterhouse prices for a bit of brisket.

Dick’s shoulders, fatally, started to heave. Pat dodged his sidelong look. Downing was compulsively smoothing his moustache. They weren’t, Pat realised, going to make it out the other end.

‘Mine eyes are made the fools—’ George twitched, and blinked, and slapped the side of his head.

Dick exploded right on cue, with ‘gouts of blood’; his face flushed blotchily, reminding Pat that he was nowhere near out of the woods of the pneumonia he’d returned with from his last attempt, exacerbated by a month’s solitary. He pressed his knee against Dick’s under the table and said mildly, ‘Steady on.’

‘Which was not so before. There’s _no such thing_ ,’ George’s voice rose to the falsetto of a schoolmaster who has lost control of his charges. ‘What?’

‘It’s brilliant, George,’ Dick wheezed, ‘but I don’t think we can let you.’

‘Really?’ He looked at the floor and rubbed the heels of his hands together. ‘I made a bit of a bish of “marshall’st me the way”, but with rehearsal—’

‘I mean,’ Dick went on, ‘it would be one thing to say no to the Kommandant, but to do it, and then to send it up like that, with the madhouse tics and the grimacing—’ He mimicked, mercilessly.

Pat watched George shrivel, and (almost worse) attempt to rally, and go along with it. He thought, not for the first time, that had he met Lt Richard Roxburghe Player, RN, anywhere _but_ here, he should have hated him, for his fine, lightly-worn arrogance, his slightly subversive intelligence, his effortless grace—the man even made chronic bronchial infection look stylish—everything that made him such attractive and exhilarating company _in_ here.

But since George had chosen the only moderately dignified escape route for himself, there was nothing Pat could do but amplify the general, insincere laughter and repartee. With so much actual suffering to go round, there was no room to be tender about mere sensibilities, and yet he recognised this episode as one which, just as much as the potentially lethal perils they'd undergone, might wake George in the middle of the night for years to come, kicking in humiliation at bedclothes that were no longer shoddy blue-and-white check or hairy, inadequate felted grey. To think of an Afterwards containing more salubrious linen was optimistic in itself, he reflected.

Dick met Pat’s eye with a grin: there was no malice in him; on the contrary, he would have been horrified and baffled to think he had wounded someone’s feelings, because he was not, himself, remotely susceptible to injury over such a matter. He had demonstrated a necessary astringency, that was all. Pat looked past his great friend’s captivating sprawl to Simon, who, having taken no part in the hilarity, was thumbing through his greasy packet of letters with the cross-grained integrity he brought to everything, and for once, envied him his contrary temperament.

* * *

‘I think that’s all I have to report, sir—oh. Will you see the Kommandant before Friday?’

‘Yes, tomorrow afternoon.’

Would you tell him we did give some thought to his request for Shakespeare, but we couldn’t find anyone to do it justice?’

‘I’m surprised you gave him the time of day, to be honest, Pat,’ the Colonel replied. ‘Or is that what you meant?’

‘Not exactly—no. I mean, well, someone tried a bit—of _Macbeth_ and it all suddenly became too shy-making to contemplate, if you know what I mean, sir. The rest of the revue’s coming along nicely. Of course we know everyone’s just there to hear Biff's band.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that. But _Macbeth_ , eh? It’s one so often given to really quite small boys, because it’s short, and a bit of a penny dreadful, I suppose. But that has the effect of obscuring what a difficult play it is, and especially the lead role.’

Pat had never heard Preston give an opinion on any cultural matter before, though he was known to frequent what Dick, with the airy contempt of one who takes the arts as a birthright, called Professor Porteous’s Emporium and Slop Shop in Literature, for its ostensible, and not its covert purpose. He was rather fascinated.

‘How so, sir?’

‘Well—not that I have any expertise, you understand,’ he said with the reticent lowering of his voice that Pat now recognised as his way of asserting authority, though that didn’t make it any less effective. ‘Macbeth is so reactive, so much acted upon by others, and yet one’s got to convey the force and drive that makes it clear why they thought he was worth provoking in the first place. Then there’s all the supernatural machinery to contend with, and the better an actress you have playing against you as Lady Macbeth, the more she risks stealing your thunder, but of course you want the best actress you can get. I suppose the temptation is to try to stop yourself blending into the scenery by chewing it, and that’s precisely what you mustn’t do.’

‘Yes, that’s exactly what Geor—I mean, yes sir, that makes a lot of sense.’

‘She should have died hereafter,’ Preston said, hideously conversational. ‘There would have been time for such a word.’

His lips drew back from his teeth in a cold snarl, but the rest of his face was neutral, unreadable, almost relaxed, as he addressed the barred window, his hands deep in his pockets.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,  
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day  
To the last syllable of recorded time,  
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools  
The way to dusty death.

His voice dwindled and grew dangerously pleasant, as it did when he was not so much about to tear strips off someone as flay him alive. Familiar as Pat was with the manoeuvre, when Preston jerked his head around and barked ‘Out! Out!’ he damn near turned tail and fled.

—brief candle.  
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player  
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage  
And then is heard no more: it is a tale  
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,  
Signifying nothing.

Pat couldn’t have described the expression on Preston’s face. He wasn’t sure it amounted to an expression at all (or that it was Preston’s) and yet it seemed to contain everything: resolute nobility, hopeless desperation, deranged and monstrous cruelty. He wanted to follow him into the jaws of hell, he wanted to knock him down before he could do any more damage. He believed in it completely: here before him was a man who had lost his wife, his hope, his mainstay, and with her everything but the legend of his own invulnerability. Maybe it it was so convincing, Pat thought, because he really had. Either way, it was terrifying.

And then, suddenly, it wasn’t any more. Pat had a great sense of settled peace, as if the world really had been put to rights. He realised that he’d backed himself up against the wall, but was glad of it, because his knees suddenly felt rather washy. _Catharsis_. He’d always thought it was just a metaphor—at most, something that the Ancient Greeks felt because their drama was a sort of religious rite; not available in modernity. It certainly hadn’t been on his list for today.

‘Bloody hell, sir. Where did you learn to do that?’ For a moment he had a barmy vision of Preston in his restless twenties, going to RADA and then into provincial rep: endless circuits of _Charley’s Aunt_ and _The Colleen Bawn_. He was handsome even now, undernourished and haggard in an olive drab pullover darned with navy wool: at twenty-five, at fighting weight and in tails, he would have been celestial, with perhaps just a hint of sulphur, a leading man to die for.

‘Learn?’ he said vaguely. ‘I didn’t learn.’ He did seem aware he’d had an extraordinary effect, though, because he sat down on the end of his bed, as if deeply fatigued. ‘I’ve never said those words to another human being in all my life.’

‘Well, it was astonishing, sir. I’ve never seen—heard anything like it, professional stage included. _Will_ you do something for the revue? Not—not that, maybe. That might be too much of a good thing, even—especially, for the Kommandant. But could you memorise another one in time?’

Preston squeezed a hand across his eyes. ‘No. It wouldn’t really be suitable, would it? For the S.B.O. to take to the boards?’

‘Very well, sir. But—but you said you’d never had any training? Never acted at all?’

‘No,’ he said, looking up. There was a dull edge to his voice. ‘Look here, Grant, I think I’ve said this before. Maybe—maybe it was Carter. But after the Great War—I wasn’t quite twenty on Armistice Day, and quite frankly I’d been put in some positions that a chap shouldn’t be in before he can even vote. And, like a lot of young men of my generation, I struggled to find my bearings. So much so, that—ah, it was thought the best thing for me—I mean,’ he said, tilting his chin up as if issuing a challenge to a duel, ‘the opinion was a psychiatric one—was fresh air, manual work and no intellectual excitement. My father had a client, down in the West Country, who gave me the use of a tied cottage in return for help around his estate. I grew my own vegetables, kept a few chickens, that sort of thing. Water from a well in the field opposite, light by oil lamp. Three books: the Bible, Old Moore’s Almanack for 1862 and a Complete Shakespeare. I knew too well that God was dead, and I had to get my cigarette papers from somewhere, but when I’d had my fill of Portraits of the Head of Nations, Correct Tables of Stamps and Taxes, A List of Fairs and Markets For All Of England and Predictions of Coming Events, I turned to the third. I thought a good deal about some of the those speeches, imagined just how I’d like to hear them done. I suppose that’s it.’

‘Yes sir,’ Pat said, feeling flattered and over-burdened, like a schoolboy whose housemaster had just confessed to trouble with drink, the gee-gees or his wife, ‘it’s one thing to imagine, but another to actually do. And you—actually did. It’s a terrific talent.’

‘Thank you, Grant. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—I suppose it’s no harm, really, but there was a detail I let slip there that I’d be obliged if you’d forget. You know which one.’

‘Of course, sir.’

Preston snorted. ‘The Army. I say something I oughtn’t, and I simply order my 2/i.c. to forget it, snap my fingers like some rotten end-of-the-pier hypnotist. The fucking Army.’

Pat had never heard the S.B.O. say the Army’s most ubiquitous word. His clean, gentlemanly vocabulary, even in the most frustrating of situations, was something Pat secretly admired very much, but while this departure didn’t lower Preston in his eyes, it did make him unusually bashful. He toed some crumbling mortar between the flags at his feet. When he looked up again Preston seemed more himself, and he hesitated, too obviously.

‘Spit it out, Grant.’

‘This is probably the most frightful cheek, sir, but you saying about forgetting and all that—it made me think— _Our revels now are ended?_ To conclude the whole show? It’s just about a minute, I think, but even that could be invaluable to the blokes getting into that sort of gallery behind—’

He clenched his fists, hoping Preston was more the chastened and forgiving Prospero of the final few speeches than the stern and vengeful summoner of the elements.

Preston chuckled, rare, warm and uninhibited, as if he really had read his mind. ‘I asked for that, didn’t I? This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine. All right. But no pointy hat, no robes, no cotton-wool whiskers.’

He was, in a Navy greatcoat with scraps of dark cloth tacked over the insignia and covering the buttons, flourishing a gilded tin crozier that came away miraculously whole from a horrid three-quarters life-size plaster bishop-saint mouldering in the chapel vestry, a thoroughgoing triumph. The same could not be said of the escape, which saw all involved recaptured within 48 hours and sentenced to a particularly brutal January; the theatre was placed out of bounds until further notice. The Kommandant informed the S.B.O. of these new orders at their next interview, and then, with a propriety stiff as his collar or his shiny boot leather, congratulated him on his performance.

‘Like the—hm! baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capped towers, et cetera, shall dissolve. A good choice—your British, mm, irony.’

‘We thought so. One day they shall, you know. One way or another, for one or the other of us, and at someone else's bidding. We're more Ariel than Prospero, really.’

The Kommandant looked out of the window, his hands clasped behind his back. ‘Or the rage of, mm, Caliban, seeing his face in a mirror.’

That was more surprising than Shakespeare, but still, perhaps, not wholly so. ‘You learn to live with it, Kommandant. Or—’

‘The alternative. Hm. Your requests concerning the British officers in sick bay have been acknowledged, Colonel Preston. I will review the cases and communicate an answer within 24 hours. If that is all?’

‘That’s all.’

 _And I’ll retire me to my Milan_ , Preston thought, as he and his escort left the chipped, tawdry-rococo ambience of the Kommandatur, _where every third thought shall be my grave._ Just how bad did it mean things were, if his immediate instinct was to append 'or with a bit of luck I will, anyway' to the sentiment? He took refuge in another favourite, a different play: 'the worst is not, so long as we can say, _This is the worst_.'

**Author's Note:**

>  _Colditz_ , a bit like the Aubrey-Maturin universe, which has a year 1812a and a year 1812b, seems to have a repeating 1941. If forced to put a date on it, I'd say this fic takes place around Christmas 1941a, but in any case after Preston has received news of his wife's death, and obviously before Pat's successful escape.


End file.
